Classical Guitar For Dummies

By Jon Chappell and Mark Phillips

Discover the magic of classical guitar with this fun and easy guide

The perfect starting point to learning classical guitar, Classical Guitar For Dummies, walks you through the steps, techniques, and styles you’ll need to finger-pick your way around some of the most beautiful songs ever written.

Whether you’re a first timer looking to add your very first classical guitar to your collection or you’ve already made the jump to the classical style want to pick up some priceless tips, this book is the easy-to-read companion you’ll want at your side. You can even play along with audio and video examples at dummies.com that will help you on your journey toward classical guitar mastery.

In Classical Guitar For Dummies, you’ll find:

• Foundational and advanced techniques, from adapting your playing posture to coloring your tone with vibrato
• Tips and tricks on playing classical guitar favorites, like Cavatina by Stanley Myers
• Explorations of classical scales, up and down the guitar neck

Classical Guitar For Dummies is an essential aid for new and aspiring classical guitarists just beginning to learn their craft. More experienced guitarists seeking to improve their fundamentals and learn some new strategies for creating amazing music will also find a ton of useful info inside.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Feb 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781119873150

Book preview

Introduction

If you’re captivated by the sound of the classical guitar, you’re in good company. No less than Ludwig van Beethoven approvingly called the guitar a miniature orchestra in itself! We don’t think we can improve on that (not that we’d try to compete with Beethoven!), but we do understand his enthusiasm. The classical guitar has the amazing ability to produce expressive melodies, complex chords, flowing arpeggios, and multiple, independent parts simultaneously — all with just six strings. It offers an incredible range of tonal possibilities as well, and it’s able to create a broad range of colors and textures, from driving percussive rhythms to sweetly lyrical melodies — and everything in between.

As modern players, we can appreciate that we’re playing classical music on the most popular and the coolest musical instrument in the world — the guitar. What could be a better way to have the best of both worlds than to take up the classical guitar? We have access to the music of history’s greatest composers — the minuets of Mozart, the bourrées of Bach, and the sonatas of Beethoven. With a classical guitar, we can delight listeners with the subtle intricacies of the Baroque era or inspire their passion with stirring pieces from the Romantic period. And we also get to do this while playing the guitar. How cool is that?

Make no mistake, though, there’s a lot more to classical guitar than just being cool. Like any other serious art form, classical guitar requires work. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun while developing the discipline and mastering the skills necessary to play classical guitar. Unlike the world of popular music, the best players in classical music — technically and musically — rise to the top. Our aim is to get you started on the right path so that every minute you devote to practicing and playing takes you closer to your goal of being the best classical guitarist you can be.

About This Book

In Classical Guitar For Dummies, 2nd Edition, we give you everything you need to play melodies, arpeggios, scales, and full-length pieces in the classical style. We present the material in a way that respects the classical tradition yet makes it fun and easy to learn. Here are just some of the methods we use to get our points across:

Step-by-step instructions: We guide you through the techniques, exercises, and pieces using plain and helpful language, so that you know exactly what to do to successfully play every exercise and piece that appears in the book.

Music notation: We present all the written musical figures in the traditional five-line staff with a treble clef, with notes indicating the pitches and rhythms. In addition, we also supply a tab staff (appearing directly below the music staff) that shows the strings and fret numbers. You can use either system, or even use them in combination, because they convey essentially the same information — just presented in a different way. In some figures we show a neck diagram, which is yet another way to see the guitar represented graphically and which serves to illustrate fingering positions. And have no fear — we show you how to interpret notation in Chapter 3.

Online tracks and videos: The website (www.dummies.com/go/classicalguitarfd2e) that corresponds with this book contains more than 99 tracks of the exercises and pieces from the book as well as 19 videos. You can listen to or view the files on your computer or mobile device, or download the files to your device of choice, so that you always have the recorded music to inspire you wherever you go.

Even if you already play the guitar, you’ll find this book valuable. You find here a focused approach on learning classical guitar the right way — the way it’s played in music schools, universities, and on recordings and concert stages the world over. This book covers how to hold the guitar in the proper position, how to strike and fret the strings according to the rules of classical guitar technique, and how to perform the rich body of repertoire that awaits classical guitarists of all levels and experience.

We take care to introduce concepts and define terms so that you don’t have to wonder what we’re talking about if we, for example, use the word staccato (which tells you to play notes short and detached, by the way). But we observe certain conventions that we may not explain every time, so following is a list of concepts and terms that we use often throughout the book.

Up and down, high and low: When we speak of up and down on the guitar — whether we’re referring to the strings, neck positions, or pitch in general — up means higher in pitch and down means lower in pitch. So the higher strings are the skinny, high-pitched ones — even though they’re closer to the floor as you hold the guitar in the playing position. Going up the neck means heading for the higher-numbered frets (toward the bridge), even though they’re slightly closer to the floor than the lower-numbered frets that are closer to the headstock. Don’t be confused by this seeming contradiction of musical direction and physical positioning; knowing which way is up becomes second nature when you begin playing.

Right hand and left hand: We say right hand to mean the hand that plucks the strings and left hand to mean the hand that frets the notes on the neck. Left-handed players sometimes flip the guitar so that the right hand becomes the fretting hand, and some method books avoid any ambiguity by using the terms picking hand and fretting hand. But we find that a little clunky, so we observe the more traditional use of right hand and left hand. If you’re a southpaw who flips, take note!

Letters and numbers: In addition to the standard music symbols that appear on the five-line staff, we often use letters and numbers to show you specific ways to use your fingers to play the notes. The letters p, i, m, and a indicate the right-hand thumb and index, middle, and ring fingers. (The letters stand for the Spanish words for these fingers.) For left-hand fingers, we use small numbers placed just to the left of the note heads: 1 = index, 2 = middle, 3 = ring, and 4 = little. In many cases we provide fingerings because it’s the only way to play the passage, so try our way first before searching for an alternative.

Foolish Assumptions

We don’t assume that you already know how to read music, nor do we assume that you even play the guitar at all. To make the notation a little easier to grasp, we include a tablature staff under every standard music notation staff in the exercises and pieces that appear in this book. Traditional classical music doesn’t include tablature, so you’re actually getting something extra here in Classical Guitar For Dummies, 2nd Edition. You can use the tab to check the fret and string location of any note or as another way to help figure out the music in case your music reading isn’t very strong. We also don’t assume that you’re a virtuoso, and so we’ve taken steps to make sure that all the exercises and pieces are easily playable by guitarists that range from beginning to intermediate level.

Icons Used in This Book

We use the following icons in this book:

Remember This one indicates important information that you want to keep in the front of your mind, as that info has a way of coming up again and again.

Technicalstuff This icon tags information that’s not absolutely necessary to perform the task at hand but that digs down below the surface to offer greater understanding on a particular subject or point.

Tip A helpful hint, factoid, or other useful nugget that makes some concept easier to grasp or a task easier to perform.

Warning We use this icon to caution you about issues that could damage your guitar or cause you discomfort. So watch for this one if you — or your guitar — like to avoid pain!

Playthis We use this icon to signal an opportunity to play a complete piece in the style of the exercise or excerpt. You can listen to the tracks and watch the videos at www.dummies.com/go/classicalguitarfd2e.

Beyond This Book

You can find some great information online as you work to learn how and improve playing the classical guitar. Look online for the following:

Cheat Sheet: Go to www.dummies.com, type in Classical Guitar For Dummies Cheat Sheet, and read the helpful Cheat Sheet you can refer to again and again.

Audio and video tracks: To listen to and watch the audio and video tracks we refer to throughout the book, just go to www.dummies.com/go/classicalguitarfd2e.

Where to Go from Here

If this is your first brush with music and the guitar — or if it has been longer than you’d care to remember since you practiced — then start right at the beginning, with Chapter 1. However, if you already play the guitar, it’s okay to go right to Chapter 2, which illustrates the special right-hand strokes and left-hand fretting position you use in classical guitar. If you already play the guitar and know proper right- and left-hand techniques, you can skip to Chapter 3, which walks you through some of the notation explanations we use in the book. Finally, if you just want to dive right in and start playing, turn to Chapter 4.

It’s a good idea, though, to come back and read what you initially skip over, just to make sure that you’re not missing something or perpetuating a bad habit. We think that you’ll read every word here eventually, whether or not you read the text in order from front to back. Even if you think you know the material, a gentle reminder can sometimes be helpful.

Part 1

Getting to Know the Classical Guitar

IN THIS PART …

Identify the different parts of the guitar.

Get into the proper playing position.

Place your hands correctly on the guitar.

Tune the guitar.

Understand music notation and tablature.

Chapter 1

An Acoustic Guitar in a League of Its Own

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Examining the term classical guitar

Bullet Breaking down the classical guitar’s parts

Bullet Noting the physical and stylistic differences between classical guitar and other guitar types

In the right hands, the classical guitar can produce some of the most beautiful sounds in all of music. With it, a skilled performer can create miniature moments of intimate tenderness or stirring sagas of grandeur and passion. One reason the classical guitar is capable of such wide-ranging textures and emotions is that it’s one of the few stringed instruments that can play chords and single notes with equal ease. And many people credit its special emotive powers to the fact that the performer uses both hands to touch the strings directly to make a sound, allowing them to coax out the softest melody or to vigorously ring out triumphant, full-voiced chords. The tonal variations you can achieve on a guitar played in the classical way rival the colors of the entire symphony orchestra. Even the great Beethoven agreed, calling the guitar a miniature orchestra in itself.

In this chapter, we start off with the very basics, explaining the two different connotations associated with classical guitar to give you a solid understanding of what you’re reading about in the first place. (Many people may not realize that simply playing a classical piece on a guitar doesn’t necessarily qualify as classical guitar!) We then conduct a side-by-side comparison of the classical guitar and its traditional acoustic counterpart, exploring their differences in physique as well as technique and musical requirements. Finally, we expound on the allure of this lesser-known stringed instrument to whet your appetite for what’s in store.

Defining What a Classical Guitar Is (and Isn’t)

The first thing you have to sort out is just what’s meant by the term classical guitar. It can describe both a type of instrument and a style of music played on that instrument. When referring to the instrument itself, you’re talking about a guitar that has a particular design and construction, is made of certain materials, and requires playing techniques that are unique to this type of guitar, as compared to other guitars. To mine the depths of all the tonal and textural richness that await you in the world of the classical guitar music, you must employ those specific right- and left-hand techniques, which together comprise the classical guitar style.

In this book we focus exclusively on the techniques that get you playing the classical guitar style — using a nylon-string classical guitar and stroking the strings with your right-hand fingers. Doing this empowers you to play the music written by the great classical composers throughout history, and following in the footsteps of concert-level virtuosos have for centuries brought their performance techniques to a high art in the same way Vladimir Horowitz did with the piano and Itzhak Perlman did with the violin. The guitar has its own Perlmans and Horowitzes, and you can read about them in Chapter 17.

The guitar as we know it is a relatively young instrument, having evolved to its present form in the 19th century. As such, it doesn’t have the rich body of music available for it that, say, the violin does, which has been around for more than 500 years. But the classical guitar has been, how shall we say, industrious in the way it has borrowed music from other instruments to claim as its own. As a result, studying classical guitar means that in addition to playing music written for the guitar, you play a lot of music that wasn’t written for the guitar in the first place, nor written by a composer who would recognize the instrument you hold in your hands. But that’s just part of the adventure of being a guitarist; you have to be somewhat of a pioneer with your instrument.

Nevertheless, nowadays composers write for the instrument all the time, ensuring its continued place in the field of serious musical instrument study. Many guitarists, associations, and organizations commission well-known composers to write compositions for the guitar in the same way that Beethoven and Mozart were commissioned by wealthy benefactors to write symphonies and sonatas.

Technicalstuff Some well-known composers from the 20th century who’ve written for the guitar include Heitor Villa-Lobos, Luciano Berio, Benjamin Britten, Elliott Carter, Peter Maxwell Davies, William Walton, Alberto Ginestera, Ástor Piazzolla, and Leo Brouwer. If you think of the classical guitar as playing just the work of the great masters or having an undeniably Spanish sound, check out what modern musical thinkers are cooking up for the classical guitar all the time.

After taking a while to come into its own historically, the classical guitar is now a permanent member of the classical music community. Classical guitar is taught in universities and conservatories, it’s a frequent program entry for concert and recital halls, and it’s found readily in new recordings by major classical music record companies. As far as music for the guitar goes, however, it’s definitely in the minority, at least in terms of music that gets heard by the public at large — with rock and pop being the major players in this arena.

Knowing What a Classical Guitar Looks Like

Viewed from the front, or facing the instrument in its standing-up position, the classical guitar body has an upper section, or bulge, where the wood curves outward; a lower section; and an inward curve in the middle separating the upper and lower parts.

The purpose of the guitar’s body is to amplify the sound that the vibrating strings make. So the guitar’s back and sides are made of stiff, hard wood that reflects, or bounces, the sound off its surface and through the top of the guitar and the sound hole. The traditional wood for the back and sides is rosewood, though lower-priced guitars sometimes use mahogany or maple. For the top, a different wood from the back and sides is used because the top’s function is to vibrate freely with the notes that the plucked strings produce. So the wood for the top is softer and more resonant — spruce and cedar are the two most common top woods.

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, so we present a picture of a classical guitar, which allows us to use a lot fewer words than a thousand to describe its various parts and functions. Figure 1-1 shows an illustration of a classical guitar with its main parts labeled. The bulleted list after Figure 1-1 is a corresponding list of those labeled parts with their definitions and brief descriptions of their functions.

Here’s a list of the classical guitar’s parts:

Back: The flat part of the guitar body, parallel to and opposite the soundboard, closest to the performer.

Body: The box or sound chamber of the guitar, which acts as a resonator or amplifier for the vibrating strings. The body is also what gives the guitar its particular — and beautiful — tone.

Schematic illustration of a typical classical guitar with its parts labeled.

© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

FIGURE 1-1: A typical classical guitar with its parts labeled.

Bridge: A thin, rectangular piece of flat wood that’s glued to the top of the guitar and secures the strings at the body. The bridge transfers the sound from the vibrating strings to the guitar’s body. Sitting in a slot of the bridge is the saddle.

Fingerboard: Also called the fretboard, this is a thin, flat plank of wood glued to the neck and divided into frets. The fingerboard is usually made of ebony, a dense, dark, and hard wood that provides a smooth feel underneath the left-hand fingers as they move up and down and across the neck. Some fingerboards are made of rosewood.

Frets: Thin metal wires on the fingerboard that run perpendicular to the strings. Pressing down a finger behind one of these shortens the vibrating length of the string, changing its pitch. Note: When used in left-hand fingering discussions, fret refers to the space below the actual fret wire.

Head or headstock: The slotted section at the top of the neck beyond the nut that holds the tuning machines, where the strings fasten.

Lower bout: The large, outwardly curved section of the body that surrounds the bridge.

Neck: The long, semicircular piece of wood jutting out from the body, with a head on one end and strings stretching the full length and beyond. Usually made of mahogany, maple, or other hard woods, the neck’s light weight and grain strength enable it to hold its shape while under the considerable tension produced by the taut strings drawn up to pitch.

Neck heel, heel: The outward-sticking part of the neck that joins the neck to the sides and back of the body.

Nut: A synthetic (formerly ivory or bone) strip of material that sits between the fingerboard and the headstock. Grooves cut into the nut hold the strings in place as they pass through the nut on their way to the tuning machines.

Rollers: The white plastic cylinders inside the slots in the head that go perpendicular to the strings and that create a spool for the strings to wrap around as they’re wound up or down to pitch. The rollers rotate by means of the tuning pegs.

Rosette: The decorative ring around the sound hole, usually made of marquetry — inlaid bits of colored wood and other materials (such as mother-of-pearl) arranged in a mosaic-like pattern.

Saddle: A synthetic (formerly ivory or bone) strip of material that sits in a slot in the bridge. The strings rest on top of the saddle, pressing down on it before passing through the bridge holes, where they’re tied off (or otherwise anchored).

Sides: The narrow, curved wooden pieces between the top and back of the guitar. The sides are made of the same wood as the back and serve to hold together the top and back and to help reflect sound out of the body and through the top.

Slots: On a classical guitar, the long, oval-shaped holes on the head that expose the rollers and allow the strings to pass through the surface of the head to reach the rollers.

Sound hole: The circular opening in the soundboard, directly underneath the strings in the upper bout. The sound hole helps to project the sound, but it isn’t the exclusive source of sound emanating from the guitar.

Soundboard or top: Also referred to as the table, the soundboard is the flat, lighter-colored wood on the body that faces the listener. Its function isn’t to remain rigid and reflect sound but to resonate (vibrate) with the strings, amplifying them and projecting the sound in the process.

Strings: The strings are what the guitarist touches (fretting with the left hand, plucking with the right) to make sound. The six strings travel the length of the neck from the head, where they’re wrapped around the tuning machines’ rollers to beyond the fingerboard, where they’re tied off at the bridge. The top three, or treble, strings are solid nylon. The bottom three, or bass, strings have a nylon core and are surrounded by a metal wrap. (All six strings are referred to as nylon strings, even though the bottom three have an outward metal material.) Strings are available at different prices (usually determined by quality) and are categorized by the degree of tension (such as high and medium).

Tuning machines: The metal hardware system of gears, shafts, and tuning pegs used to wind the strings to different tensions to get them in tune.

Tuning pegs: The handles or buttons of the tuning machines that guitarists grip with their fingers to allow them to tune the strings by tightening or loosening them.

Upper bout: The large, outwardly curved section of the body that surrounds the sound hole and the upper frets of the fingerboard.

Waist: The narrow, inwardly curved part of the body between the upper bout and the lower bout.

Recognizing How a Classical Guitar Physically Differs from Its Peers

A classical guitar is like every other guitar in overall physique. And like other types of acoustic guitars, the classical guitar produces its sound, well, acoustically — that is, without the aid of amplification — unlike the Stratocaster of Jimi Hendrix, which must be played through a guitar amplifier (though it is possible to amplify the acoustic sound of a classical guitar with a microphone).

Remember But watch out when you hear the term acoustic guitar. A classical guitar produces its sound without amplification, so all classical guitars are in a sense acoustic guitars. But not all acoustics are classical.

Sometimes the best way to know what something is and what makes it special is to know what it isn’t. Check out Figure 1-2, which shows a classical guitar alongside a popular traditional acoustic model. Then read through the following list, which sums up some of the major differences between them:

A classical guitar uses nylon strings. All other acoustics used for unplugged purposes are built for steel stings. And you can’t just swap out a set of nylons in your steel string and start playing Bach. The parts that connect the strings to the guitar are built differently, and you’d have a tough time securing a nylon string onto a steel-string guitar. Nylon strings have a gentler sound that suits classical guitar music better than the steel variety.

Schematic illustration of a classical guitar (left) with an acoustic steel-string model alongside it.

© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

FIGURE 1-2: A classical guitar (left) with an acoustic steel-string model alongside it.

Technicalstuff Some people use the adjective folk to mean any unamplified guitar, so it’s always a good idea to clarify whether they mean the nylon-string (classical) or steel-string variety — assuming they’re aware of the difference. The guitars played by James Taylor, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Dave Matthews, and Sheryl Crow are all steel-string acoustics, though some folk, pop, and jazz musicians do play their brand of music on a classical guitar, including jazz guitarist Earl Klugh and, somewhat improbably, country music legend Willie Nelson.

Technicalstuff Though the instrument is officially known as a classical guitar, other nicknames have sprung up that have come to refer to the instrument played by classical guitarists. Some of these names include nylon-string guitar, Spanish guitar, gut-string guitar, and flamenco guitar (though that appellation is sometimes used to distinguish a flamenco guitar from a classical guitar).

A classical guitar has only one body size. Acoustic guitar bodies vary widely with regard to size and